Canadian Cop Shoe Phones

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Murray.

Hi, Murray, where are you calling from?

I’m calling from Ontario, Canada, near Ottawa.

Okay, very good.

What can we do for you?

Well, I’ve got a question about a phrase that’s commonly used in police circles here in Ontario when one of us wants the other to contact by cell phone. The common phrase is, contact me on my shoe phone or contact me on my shoe. And my question is, I suspect this may come from Maxwell Smart, and have you ever heard of this phrase before?

Well, only from the television show Maxwell Smart, for me, anyway. That’s the kind of goofy spy show, right? He’s like the hapless spy who, despite his mistakes, constantly catches the bad guy.

Right.

And most of the folks that use the phrase now, I’m older than a lot of them. Most of the guys and officers have never seen this sitcom. It’s an old 60s sitcom, isn’t it?

Yeah, yeah, 1965.

But wasn’t there a Steve Carell movie based on it?

Oh, yeah. Maybe they’ve seen that. Is that a common phrase?

It’s come up, I think I saw it in a Tom Clancy novel years ago, and it was in military circles, and I think they meant it was a phone that you kept on your person kind of surreptitiously. Like you might have a cell phone literally in your boot, or you might have it tucked in a pocket so that you can make these calls to high command without kind of going through channels. You can kind of just skip the procedures.

Yeah, that would make sense, too. This one is not nearly as – the phrase we use is simply to call me on the cell phone. There’s nothing more elaborate than that.

Yeah, but it makes perfect – if someone said to me, oh, yeah, I’m going to call them on my shoe phone, it would take me a second. I might giggle, but then I think I would get it.

Oh, sure.

But you guys say call me on my shoe?

Yes, call me on my shoe phone, call me on my shoe. Especially if we’re contacting cruisers car-to-car or something, and you have to get off the air for a more lengthy or private conversation.

Well, we should. Go ahead and explain for our younger listeners who haven’t seen the movie or the television show what we’re talking about. In the 1960s, there was a spoof on the Cold War spies, and sort of East versus West, and the spy hero or anti-hero was Maxwell Smart, and he had a number of technical items at his disposal, one of which long before cell phones were invented was basically a cell phone, a small phone that would fit in the heel of his shoe or in a pen or in other places. And it was rather comical to see him reach into a shoe or pocket or whatever and come up with a phone.

Well, what I was remembering, he had a heel that came off the shoe, and there was a rotary dial underneath, and he would hold the sole of the shoe up to his face like a handset.

Yes, and I recall another one of the shows where he was on the shoe phone, and he got a call on his pen phone, and he had to put the shoe phone on hold. He told me, I have to put you on hold because I have to take my pen.

Perfect, perfect. So that’s great. So the police force up there in Ottawa used this?

Well, in Ontario, at least in more than just the city, there’s other services as well. You know what? We’ve got to hear from our other, I guess we have other listeners who are in the police forces around the country. My father was a cop for years and years, and I don’t remember him ever using that. But it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist now. They may not have had cell phones back in the day.

Well, they didn’t.

Yeah, when he was a cop, they mostly didn’t.

That’s true. But my question is, it’s said without any sense of irony or any reference to the show. People just say, call me on my shoe, and it’s just a normal way to say it.

And then you just move on?

And then you just move on.

Wow. Is there a sense of humor about it?

That’s my question, yeah.

Well, yes, it’s sort of a lighthearted in-joke, right, or an in-phrase. So maybe your, like, CEO wouldn’t say it at a press briefing.

No, no, no. This wouldn’t be a public usage of the phrase just amongst ourselves.

Oh, I love this. I’ve got to say, Murray, if you come up with any more of this language that you think we should know, you should send us an email. We’ll get you back on the show, all right?

I’ll do that. Because this is good stuff.

Okay, nice talking to you.

Thank you for calling.

Thanks a lot. Really appreciate it.

Take care now.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

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